Browsing by Author "Norberg, Taru"

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the experiences of ECEC center leaders about the unprofessionalism of educational interaction and the challenges it brings. In addition, the study examines the experience of tackling unprofessionalism and experiences related to managing the phenomenon. The aim is to analyze and describe the perceptions and experiences of managers, as well as their variation. The theoretical framework of the study consists of an examination of educational interaction, unprofessionalism and leadership, as well as a description in the context of early childhood education. The theory takes into account the paucity of previous research on early childhood professionalism and therefore the framework has been partially extended to look at professionalism in other fields as well, such as nursing and medicine. The starting points of the study were a multi-method and phenomenographic study, the data of which were obtained with a semi-structured e-questionnaire. The survey was addressed to municipal ECEC center leaders on the basis of the OAJ member register. In the analysis of qualitative data, context analysis was typically used for phenomenography, and the results of multiple-choice questions (Likert) are pre-sented as percentage distributions. Combining the acquisition and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data aims at a better understanding of a diverse and little-studied phenomenon. Leaders ’experiences of the unprofessional nature of educational interaction varied. However, most situ-ations were interpreted as completely unprofessional. All respondents reported unprofessionalism in their workplace and there was variation in its prevalence. Intervention in the unprofessional profession was generally perceived negatively by managers, although the task could still be perceived as important, co-ercive or obligatory. There were five experiences describing the management of challenging situations: the relationship between the manager and the employee, self-management, pedagogical management, professionalism as a phenomenon, and client work. Unprofessionalism is a multidimensional phenome-non challenging leadership and its definition and identification is important for developing the quality of early childhood education. The key tasks of a leader in terms of shared pedagogical leadership are to address unprofessional situations and to implement ethical reflection and moral decision-making in the work community.